Thirty-one years after the IRA abducted and executed her, the inquest into the death of Belfast mother of 10 Mrs Jean McConville yesterday returned a verdict that she had died from a gunshot wound due to an unlawful killing.
Evidence was given that 28 armed and masked men and women had abducted the woman, who was just five feet tall, from the flat she shared with her 10 children. Her husband had died 11 months earlier.
After the inquest her children said they were still waiting for the IRA to clear her name and admit they were wrong to kill her and to claim that she had been an informer.
The inquest in Dundalk Coroner's Court heard that a father out walking on Shelling Hill beach on August 26th 2003 had come across her shallow grave. It was just 1,200 metres from Templetown beach, where the IRA claimed they had buried her.
After evidence from a number of gardaí, two pathologists and an osteo-archaeologist, the jury said it was not clear if she had been shot at the beach. They found that she had died "at a place unknown".
Her eldest son, Arthur, described the evening she was abducted to the court and said it was about 6.30 p.m. when four masked men and four masked women banged at the door and told his mother to put on her coat.
When her children began to panic and scream, "they said she was only being taken for questioning for a few hours". She was very upset, he said, and he asked to go, too. However, at the bottom of the stairs "they put guns to my head and told me to f-off back". He could see between 18 and 20 armed and masked people waiting.
His sister Helen, the eldest daughter, returned from buying chips for tea and "we just waited and waited from that night for years and years and never saw our mother again". When he saw her skeletal remains he recognised a nappy pin that was still pinned to her clothes. "My mother always had a nappy pin," he explained.
The court heard how official Garda searches of Templetown beach, based on information given by the IRA to the Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains, over two consecutive summers did not locate her grave, which was accidentally found by a Dundalk man. The next morning this man had contacted the Garda and Supt Pat Magee, from Dundalk, was the first to visit the site. He said he sifted through the sand and when he saw a skull and was certain that the remains were human and not animal he had the site sealed.
Garda ballistic experts said that a single lead bullet, .22 calibre, was recovered during the post-mortem. It was checked against records in the Republic and Northern Ireland, but no matches were found. It had been in very bad condition.
The court also heard that the bullet could have been fired from a pistol or revolver and was most likely used at close range in an "execution" style.
No bullet casing was found at the scene and no definitive answer could be given by any witness as to whether Mrs McConville had been shot there or if she had been shot elsewhere and later buried at the beach.
However, Det Insp Brendan McArdle said it was his experience that in paramilitary-type executions people were abducted, interrogated and executed at the location where the body was concealed. He also said the Garda file on her murder remained open.
Her grave took up about one square metre of sand and post-mortem examinations by Dr Richard Shepard and later by Dr Marie Cassidy had both concluded that she died from a gunshot wound to the back of the head.
Osteo-archaeologist Loreen Buckley said that if the remains had been removed after they had become skeletalised it would be impossible for them to have been put back in the correct anatomical position that they were in at the beach.
Because of the condition of the remains, DNA tests were required to confirm they were those of Jean McConville.
The jury spent 20 minutes considering its findings and concluded that the deceased was Mrs McConville, that she died sometime between her abduction on December 7th 1972 and December 21st 1972, and that she died in a place unknown. The cause of death was a gunshot wound due to an unlawful killing.